Stop Google.com Redirecting to Local Country or Language Version of Google

Traveling abroad can quickly become frustrating when you attempt a search on Google.com and discover you are redirected to the local countries variant of Google, with the local language and all. This language redirect can happen when using a VPN or proxy as well. While this is convenient for things like local search and Maps, if you’re trying to find results in English while you’re in a non-english speaking country or on a non-english Google site, the redirect is annoying and can end up being outright confusing.

Fortunately, there’s a simple and quick solution to the automatic Google country redirect, insuring that you’ll always visit the one-and-only Google.com regardless of your current location on the globe.

The solution to stop the Google language and country redirect is simple enough: use the alternate NCR Google URL of “http://google.com/ncr” – This little known alternate Google NCR page stands for “No Country Redirect” and will always display Google.com in English – regardless of whether you’re in India, China, Brazil, Honduras, Germany, UK, New Zealand, Australia, or anywhere else on planet Earth.

Here’s the Google NCR No Country Redirect URL: Just remember this, or better yet, bookmark it for when you’re traveling out of your native region:

You can click that link to open Google NCR or just put the URL in your web browser, be it Chrome, Safari, Internet Explorer, Firefox, whatever:

An alternate solution is to use Google’s Language Tools to set a primary language for a specific Google account as well, but the NCR link to be much easier to remember and more flexible, because it does not require you to log in to a Google account to work (whereas setting a default language does require the login).

This a fairly general tip and it applies to all web browsers and all computers running all OS’s, meaning whether you’re using Mac OS X on a MacBook Air, iPad, iPhone, Windows 7 or Windows 10 on a PC, Android on a smartphone, or anything else, you can always get the plain Google.com URL.

One final tip regarding Google localization; you can go the reverse direction as well, if you want to load another countries or regions Google version, simply apply their Top Level Domain to the Google URL, or adjust the account Language Tools to fit your desired search localization. Of course, using a proxy, SOCKS proxy and SSH tunnel, or VPN with an IP in the desired region is another way, but that’s a bit more technical beyond the scope of simply adjusting a URL in your web browser.

Happy travels, where ever you are! If you know of another way to get localized versions of global Google websites, let us know in the comments!

I’m not from the USA, so I’ve never thought about this problem. Every country just has it’s own Google URL, so we just go to google.de, google.be, google.nl, google.fr, google.co.uk, google.is and so on. It doesn’t matter where I am, I’ve just set the Google URL of my own country as the start page in Safari, so Google is always in my own language.

I’ve never thought about people from the USA using google.com and being redirected. Isn’t there a google.us you can use?

No. I’ve just tested that, but when I go to google.us, I’m just directed to my local Google URL. Strange, I expected google.com to redirect to the local Google URL and google.us not to redirect and just to be in English, just like all other local Google pages are written in the local language.

Even WITH VPN (connected to USA), WITH every browser PREVENTING cookies from say .pt, WITH language settings to English, WITH never having searched anything in say Portuguese, thus NO suggestion I’d even understand a single ad google serves me…

fricking FRICKING STUPID google monkeys every so often “on a whim” serve me .pt pages: google.pt, youtube.pt, and what the heck!

These unbelievably DUMB and STUBBORN google “engineers” don’t grasp that WHEN WE SEARCH IN ENGLISH IT’S ENGLISH PAGES WE NEED!

This is annoying me so badly. For gods sakes, if I type in http://www.google.com than that´s where I want to go! The search results for different country google are often very different and don´t find what I need. Thank you for the tip, hopefully it will solve thys annoying problem.

A great tip. I live in Latvia and can’t stand the local redirect as I mostly research foreign markets and the insistent local setting was really in the way. Thanks for the great tips. What does the encrypted.Google do – same as Chrome incognito? I am also sick of the nosy ads.

Chrome incognito won’t actually help you with the nosiness of ads. I’ve been using a fightback extension called adnauseam which blocks ads but also tries to screw with their nosiness by clicking them all in the background. Which is kinda awesome. It’s in the chrome store but I’ve also got it on firefox: adnauseam.io

Using Internet Explorer, the Google search page just decided to switch to another language. Looking at the links, I could open the language preferences page which listed a couple of dozen languages I had never heard of (is Cherokee a real written language?) but English wasn’t an option. Will someone at Google please add English as an option to all pages?

I’m in The Netherlands right now and when I do a search for example ‘garnier.com’, it shows their US website in English in the search results. Then when I click on it, it redirects me to the local Dutch site.
If I do a search for ‘Match.com’, it shows their English homepage. Then when I click on it, it redirects me to lexa.nl, their Dutch version of Match.com. Could someone explain why this happen and how I fix this? Thanks so much.

I live in the USA and haven’t been traveling out of the country. Suddenly the short cut for Google.com takes me to Brazil’s Google. Not only that, but all Google ads on every webpage are Brazilian in Firefox. Your suggested link doesn’t cure.

How do I make Google.com.au (Australia) my default webpage with NCR installed?
And if I cannot, how do I uninstall NCR?
I still get redirected back to the spanish webpages when I do a google search even with NCR on.
Maybe the OS El Capitan has something to do with it?
Help please!!!

I hope so many of you couldn’t find the right way to use google.com in the search bar of new tab page. I too struggled a lot but finally I hope resolved my issue. That may be useful to you too. Have a look at it………

First go to your settings of your chrome browser.
Then go to search and select manage search engines. Delete the google search engine, if it is there already. Believe me it is going to be fine.

Planning for a trip to the UK from USA, I “starred” quite a few points-of-interest on Google Maps before l left. When I arrived in the UK and tried to access Google Maps via laptop, it kept kicking me to https://maps.google.co.uk/ which would not display my starred locations. Very frustrating!

Your fix worked like a charm: after using http://www.google.com/ncr to access google search page, I searched for “google maps” and it took me to my regular maps page with all my favorites shown. No longer redirected to the UK version of Google Maps.

That “/ncr” link is mighty handy – thanks for that – I never knew it existed!

I’ve been traveling for work quite frequently as of late, and the number of search engine variations that I was encountering was beginning to drive me a little mad.

I tried changing my geographical location on my browser, making sure my homepage was set to the .com extension, etc. No matter what I did though, I was usually being sent to a search engine I could rarely comprehend – haha.

Once again, thank you for that link – it surely beats going through an extremely long URL full of miscellaneous characters in order to achieve the desired extension.

When I click on match.ca it redirects to international match and I cannot login. I tried it on my macbook pro and my imac, both did the same thing. But if I use my pc desktop or pc laptop, match.ca works fine. What changed in osx to cause this? This is not a match.com or google.ca problem.

The /ncr trick did the job until mid-2017 but, unfortunately, it no longer works. I currently live in South America and keep being force-fed the Brazilian version of Google no matter how many times I make it clear in the Search Settings that I want the U.S. ENGLISH version of their services. And this isn’t just Google. It’s everywhere. I can’t even access the ESPN website without being redirected to a localized version (which, of course, features no content about the MLB, for example, but rather a compilation of local soccer news). VPNs are a bit of a gamble too. Sometimes they work, some times they don’t, and when they do, the speed is unbearably slow, especially here where the average connection already isn’t that great.

Thank you for your help anyway. I hope a new solution can come up soon for expats out there who just don’t want to have to jump through hoops to access a simple online service.

I am curious as to what devices and browsers you are using for your searches. I am in Germany and had the problem with Google.com redirecting to Google.de when I used Safari on my iPad. I tried the second approach suggested by Tim and it solved the problem. However I had to type in “Google.com/ncr” every time I wanted to do a new search, which is annoying. Moreover, the web pages found by the searches were very slow to load. For comparison, I got out my PC laptop. When I do Google searches on this in Firefox, they give results in English, and the sites load much more quickly (both devices were connected to the same router, and are about the same age). Finally, I went back to the iPad and installed Google Chrome. When I do searches on this the results are in English, and the web pages load faster. So it looks like the problem can be solved simply by using particular browsers.

My issue is that I’m from the USA and going to school in canada and doing academic research, but keep getting canadian hits. Which is definitely not something I want since canadian academic scholarship is vastly inferior to American (and international) scholarship, especially in my field.

Of course it’s the same thing with the local library resources. I’m not getting the same kinds of hits I get when I’m state side and it’s really annoying.

Have you tried changing Google search settings? Click on “settings” (which can either be at the top or bottom of the page), and then choose “search settings”. Scroll down to “region” and choose “United States” (the default is “current region”). Be sure to click “Save” at the bottom. I think this will solve most of your problems. I would also recommend using a database like Google Scholar to do your searches.

This website and third-party tools use cookies for functional, analytical, and advertising purposes. By continuing to browse the site, closing this banner, scrolling this webpage, or clicking a link, you agree to these cookies. You can review our privacy policy for additional information.I AcceptPrivacy Policy